Obama love

I watched the swearing-in and the inaugural speech today. I walked into the break room right as he was about to be sworn in and I stayed for the entire speech. I only had 15 minutes but of course it all lasted longer than that. So, I got a tardy mark today (lost out on 7 minutes of pay). Oh well, it was more than worth it. Talk about history.

After the speech started, two of my co-workers, whom I did not know, came in and watched it with me. They were both black women. It was just amazing to watch and we talked about how in the past we never cared about elections as strongly as we did about this one.

When I saw the mall, and the nearly 2 million (or more?) people crowded in, some miles away, I was overwhelmed. It was so moving to see so many people caring so much about this new president. It's like 3/4 of the country stopped for a half hour.

My co-workers who were McCain supporters were very subdued today. Which was nice.

Beyonce sang "At Last" for the first dance between President and Mrs. Obama. They looked so nice up there on stage together. It is so obvious that they adore each other. It's beautiful to behold.

President Obama. Boy does that sound nice.

why yes, we CAN

This past weekend I went through a ton of junk mail paperwork (I'm not nearly done with it all yet) and I came across SO MANY anti-Obama ads that have come to me in the mail. I'm looking at all these ads and they're talking about how terrible life would be under an Obama presidency: universal health care, gay marriage, abortion rights, gun control, pro-union, socialism, spreading the wealth....

and I can't help but think....

this is supposed to convince me NOT to vote for him?

I think their message is just not hitting their target audience.

Several people I know have already voted. I plan to vote the old fashioned way at the polls on Tuesday morning. I have no idea if I will have a line to vote and how long that line will be if I do have to stand in it. One girl (who often comments on my blogs here) said she got a little teary-eyed when she voted and I have to say that today, even though I haven't cast my ballot yet, I get a little teary-eyed when I think about how amazing a candidate Barack Obama is. I watched his infomercial tonight and I was reminded again of the power of his message of hope and confidence in the fundamental goodness of all Americans.

A year from now I may be completely disillusioned and disappointed in Obama. I may hate that I ever voted for him. I hope this will not be the case, or, at least if I am unhappy in his presidency that I don't regret latching onto this beacon of hope that so many of his supporters seem to be caught up in. I think his message of hope is exactly what this country needs. He doesn't speak about hope in and of itself. He also has already made it pretty clear that his government is not going to just give handouts, that there will need to be sacrifice on the part of all Americans to pull us out of this mess we find ourselves in.

I am not so blind to the Obama cult of personality (for lack of a better term) that I can't find some fault in his infomercial. In talking about the environment, he commented that he supports clean coal initiatives, offshore oil drilling and tapping into the natural gas reserves. I think this is a bad idea. I would need to hear more about it to form a complete opinion, but I think focusing on energy efficiency and calling on Americans to innovate to find new energy sources - making THAT the goal of his administration a la JFK and the Space Race - is a better long-term solution to our environmental problems than continuing to use the same fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) that got us into this environmental mess.

Also, I find this blog, "Yes We Can (hold babies)" to be both adorable, optimistic, and somewhat disturbing.